Zhoushan Port, a bounded fuel filling center

The Streaming down the Yangtze team is now at Ningbo-Zhoushan Port, which is the starting point of the Maritime Silk Road.

In 2017, the port's throughput capacity was registered at 1 billion tons, and was the busiest port in the world in terms of cargo tonnage.

View of Zhoushan Century Pacific Chemical in Zhoushan on August 14, 2018. [Photo: China Plus/Ren Qijun]

Ningbo-Zhoushan Port is on the East China Sea, at the crossroads of the north-south inland and coastal shipping route, including canals to the Yangtze River, to the north.

Our reporter Min Rui is in Zhoushan with the "Streaming down the Yangtze" team. We earlier had a conversation with her on the "Beijing Hour".

Tell us what you learned from the port?

It is the busiest port in the world in terms of cargo tonnage.

I have a list of commodities being transferred from the port, and top of that list is iron ore.

So, I learned the port is actually an iron ore distribution center for the whole Asia Pacific region.

The iron ore from Australia and Brazil came in large quantity.

The local authority plans to build an international mixed ore trading center here to cope with trading demand.

It’s all about the connectivity here. As of February, this year, the Ningbo-Zhoushan port had set up trade channels with more than 600 ports in over 100 countries and regions, with 247 shipping routes established, of which half of these routes are ocean routes.

With such a busy port, a lot of services needs upgrade too.

Earlier I talked with Xu Yan, an official with the Zhoushan River-Ocean Combined Transportation Service Center, says they will speed up the construction of a marine service base and an oil distribution hub, so the hub can provide bounded fuel filling for cargo ships.

You mentioned the oil distribution; how does that work?

I was told the port will establish a bonded fuel filling center for the Northeast Asia.

When a ship comes to the Ningbo-Zhoushan port to fill the tank, the bonded oil is being sold at a cheaper price than those from inland. Ship owners can save up to 8 US dollars per ton.

Other than price advantage, the port is also in a 500 km range circle with Korea’s Busan and Japan’s Osaka, Kobe, Nagasaki.

Officials said they plan to build a bonded oil processing center as well, to support the fuel filling business.

Photo shows a tanker discharging oil at Aoshan Base, Zhoushan on August 14, 2018. [Photo: China Plus/Ying Hongfeng]

Is there anything particularly interests you?

I visited the design center of China's first river and ocean-going cargo ship.

The design center is located in Zhoushan with many young but talented ship designers.

They told me the density of sea water is more than river water because of presence of a number of salts dissolved in it.

So when the ship enters the sea, the weight of water displaced is now more than what it was previously when the ship was in river. The up thrust increases and the ship rises up.

So this is one of the most important technic issues they have to overcome through many calculation and experiments, and they made it.

As a result, China's first river and ocean-going cargo ship, or Jiang Hai Zhi Da 1 in Chinese, set for the maiden voyage in April.

The voyage passed China's Yangtze River and the East China Sea.

Such a river-ocean combined journey used to require transshipments from a river to ocean or ocean to river, but now with the ship, it is able to sail in both river and sea.

So far, the cargo ship has made 19 voyages, with 400,000 tons of cargo, generated more than 1 million US dollars revenue, and is expected to have more presence upstream on the Yangtze River.

That was CRI's Min Rui, part of the 'Streaming Down the Yangtze' team, at Ningbo-Zhoushan Port on the East China Sea.